


One Little Tiny Bit

by thanksforthecrumb



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Homesickness, Loneliness, M/M, Smut, a little bit of, haha see what I did there, idk i tried guys, one little tiny bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-21
Updated: 2014-05-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 00:04:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1667381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thanksforthecrumb/pseuds/thanksforthecrumb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Francis's handful of soldiers drove the English out of Calais, they'd all been gone from their homes and their loved ones for longer than anyone would like. That's enough to drive them all (particularly two naughty, towheaded lads) mad. Francis and Leith establish a friendship of sorts, one grateful for a life saved, the other grateful for a life given. But beyond that, what else is this friendship based off? We've seen by 1x22 that the two are relatively close. A fic about Francis and Leith's relationship—and whether it extends beyond the traditional brotherhood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Little Tiny Bit

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my first venture into the land of smut. I can't write it worth crap, as I'm sure you'll noticed. But anyway, I would like to get better at writing smut and stuff, so if anyone has any helpful suggestion/tips or constructive criticisms they're willing to share, that would be great. Also, feel free to cringe and/or laugh at my attempts at slash smut. ;)

The tent flap opened tentatively, pouring in light from the bright outside. Leith squinted his eyes against the unwelcome brightness. “Leith?” A man’s voice floated to his ears. “Are you all right?”

Leith blinked open, struggling to clear his tired eyes. He rubbed his eyes, swallowing experimentally. His throat was raw and patchy. “Um…hello…?”

The man in front of him blurred and came into focus. Blond curls, hand resting perpetually on his sword hilt, friendly grin, horrible posture…the dauphin. Leith bolted forward, snapping his aching body into a sitting position. “Your Hi—”

But the dauphin’s grin only grew wider. “Leith,” he said warmly. “You’re feeling better. I’m glad to see.” He sat down on Leith’s cot, flashing a hand to stabilize the creaking mattress. “Sorry,” he apologized as he rocked Leith’s bed.

“No, no. My fault.”

The dauphin looked at him quizzically then shook his head. “How are your wounds healing?”

Leith grunted. “They’re…healing. If you can call it that. They seem to be taking their time.” He paused, then remembered who he was talking to. He cleared his throat nervously. “Your Highness.”

The dauphin cocked his head. “Why do you insist on calling me ‘Your Highness?’” He smiled. “I do have a name, you know. Same as you.”

Leith stared at him blankly, and the prince laughed. Bell-like, ringing. Leith felt a smile creep onto his mouth.

The dauphin extended a hand, raising his eyebrows invitingly as Leith hesitated to take it. “Francis,” the young man said, his grip surprisingly firm.

“Leith. Though, you already knew that.”

Francis nodded. “Well, Leith. I’ll leave you to your laying and your wounds to their healing.” He put a hand on Leith’s knee as he rose to leave. Leith jumped, and Francis whipped around to look at him reflexively. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were so…jumpy. Soldiers often are, I suppose.”

Leith shook his head slightly. “It’s just…it’s been so long since I was…”—he swallowed—“touched.”

The prince’s playful grin flitted back onto his face. He cocked a teasing eyebrow. “Missing your girl?” His hands fell to his side, his expression changing from light-hearted to wistful, sad in a beat. He blew out gently, staring off somewhere far away, somewhere Leith wasn’t able to see. Francis looked up at him suddenly, a bitter smirk on his lips. “I miss her. Mary.”

Leith nodded. “Does she have a name? Your girl?” Francis asked him. His eyes were still a bit cloudy, and he wasn’t looking at Leith as he spoke. Leith nearly laughed as he took in Francis, who looked a bit like he was imitating a tragic hero, his hand resting on his sword, head thrust defiantly high and pointed in the direction of hope. He sobered as the spasms his chuckles caused rocked his body. A sharp pain shot through his arm.

“Not one I’d share with you,” Leith grimaced through the throbs.

Francis glanced at him. “Ah. I see. Well, she must be lovely. For you to pursue her with such…vigor.”

“She is,” Leith breathed. He imagined her warm eyes, her shining smiles, the scent of fabrics and delicate chocolates mulled together. Her scent. He could nearly taste it…

Francis sat back down on the cot. “It’s—it’s been months since I saw Mary. I know this sounds odd, and I know I probably shouldn’t be bothering you with silly boy’s words, but…I miss her. So, so very much.” He covered his face with a hand, wiping down from his forehead to his chin slowly. “I thought we could—maybe—share our…”

Leith smiled gradually, allowing his eyelids to close partially. A blurred Francis now sat on the thin mattress. “Share our sorrows? Our misery? The pain of leaving the one you love behind?”

Francis grinned sheepishly. “Yes.”

“All right. You first, or me?”

“I suppose I’ll go first…?”

Leith lifted a head, nodding. Francis sucked in a breath. He chuckled nervously. “Right. Well…Dear God, this is so much more…awkward than I imagined. I don’t know where to start. I…” He glanced down at his hands, entwined together. “I miss her so much. Every day I wonder what she’s done, what she’s eaten for meals. I wonder what she’s worn and what she’s said. Sometimes I think we’ll never see each other again. And it’s—it’s unimaginable, but I still imagine it. I want to live through this whole damn thing. I promised I’d come back to her, Leith. I _promised._ I want to see her again. I want her so badly. I just want to go home, Leith. I just want to go _home_.”

Francis’s voice had become thick and Leith averted his eyes, even though he knew Francis would never let Leith see him cry. But to his surprise, Francis turned to look at him, the rims of his eyes red, his nose slightly puffed. And in that moment, it struck Leith just how much of a boy Francis was. He was still merely a boy. A boy who’d seen far too much. He had far too much, and he’d lost far too much. 

Without thinking, he reached a hand out to Francis. And instead of pausing where he knew he should’ve, stopping to thump the prince lightly on the back, his arm kept moving, until it was encircled around Francis. The other arm followed, wrapping itself around the dauphin and holding him close. There was a moment’s hesitation before Leith felt the body underneath him stir, felt warm hands touch his shoulder blades. Francis clung onto him tightly, as if he was afraid that if he let go, he’d never see Leith again. So they sat there. It must have been several minutes, because Leith’s arm was starting to pinch and creak again, but he couldn’t release his grip on Francis, couldn’t back out of this embrace.

He closed his eyes, breathing deeply through his nostrils. When he opened his eyes, the light nearly blinded him after being squeezed shut for so long and so hard. All he saw was blond locks. Blond locks and pale skin. All he felt was warmth. Blessed warmth from a blessed body underneath his. And if he breathed in…yes. All he could smell was her. Lace and powder and chocolate. Her brilliant smile flashed across his mind, her beautiful warm brown eyes. He could feel her body against his, taste her on his tongue. He moved his hands down from Francis’s back to his chest, pausing to stroke the dauphin’s pectorals through his shirt.

The other man broke apart from the embrace abruptly, springing back from Leith’s touch as if he was on fire. “What the hell?” he spat out. His eyebrows were nearly on top of his hairline in surprise, his eyes huge white circles.

Leith’s eyes snapped open. “Oh. Oh my God. I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking clearly. I got caught up in the moment and I—”

“You what?”

“I just…I don’t know. Please forgive me.”

Francis was staring wildly at Leith. He ran a hand through his mop of blond curls. He breathed deeply. “No. You should forgive me. I overreacted. I—sometimes I imagine Mary…” he trailed off and Leith figured he wasn’t just talking of seeing Mary standing around doing nothing. “I mean,” he continued, “I understand why…maybe we shouldn’t speak of this.”

Leith nodded quickly. “Right. Of course.”

Francis adjusted his sword belt and cleared his throat. “Er…goodbye, Leith. I hope you feel better.”

Leith dipped his head. As Francis turned to go, he offered Leith a small smile. He opened the tent flap, pausing as he checked the tiny makeshift camp from the tent’s protective covering.

“Wait,” said Leith, surprised when he heard his own voice. Francis turned to look at him. “Stay.”

Francis bit his lip and gave a barely perceptible nod. “All right,” he murmured. He bundled his heavy chain mail into a pile and sat on it.

Leith swallowed quickly. “Could…” He stopped. This was ridiculous. But at the same time, he felt a strangely tenacious desire to keep Francis in the tent. With him. “Tell me a story?”

Francis crossed his legs and rested his hands on his knees, giving Leith a look that seemed to say _Why not?_ “What do you want to hear?”

“Something about you,” Leith answered without hesitating. He cursed himself. What an idiot. And where the hell were these stupid words coming from?

Francis paused, glancing at the ceiling of the tent, thinking of something he could tell Leith. “When Mary and I were children, growing up together at the castle, we got up to all sorts of mischief.” 

Francis smiled as he recalled his memory, but Leith groaned inwardly that the prince’s story involved Mary. Which was silly, really, but Leith didn’t seem to have a functioning grip on his emotions at the moment. 

“You wouldn’t believe the trouble we got into, the things we did. I swear, the nurses hated us for the longest time.  Once, after a dinner with a Spanish ambassador, we were so sick of sitting in straight-backed chairs and being quiet, we decided to go up to her rooms. We snuck out of the dinner. Everyone was half-asleep from boredom and too much wine, anyway, and my mother didn’t even mind when I asked her if we could go to our rooms. So we went to hers instead, because the night had been wasted, and we had plenty of fun to pack into the last few hours of the day. For a few minutes we just laid there on her bed, giggling about how we’d snuck away, how no one knew what we were doing, and how funny-looking the Spanish ambassador was.” Francis looked from the ceiling flaps of the tent to Leith suddenly, smiling. “You should have seen the man. He had a nose like a potato and the thinnest lips you’ve ever seen. His ears stuck out, as well. We teased him endlessly in her room. But that got boring after a while. So Mary took on of her pillows and whipped it across my face. Before you know it, we’d started jumping all over the bed, the pillows, jumping all over each other. The pillows were ruined. And we both got quite a few bruises from it, I remember. We hadn’t known pillows could hurt so much, even when you throw them at someone.” Here he laughed, loud and reverberating through the tent. Leith felt a smile on his lips, felt a bubble of laughter rise from his chest to his throat. Francis wasn’t the greatest storyteller, that was clear. But if he looked into the dauphin’s eyes, Leith could see the level on which Francis felt the story, _lived_ it. It was as if the prince Leith saw before him wasn’t really there, but stuck in that moment with the pillows and the shouting and the Mary.

Francis shook his head ruefully, still grinning. “The bed was destroyed. We’d trampled all over the sheets and the covers…it was a mess. There were feather floating around everywhere, covering the whole room. At first, they were fun. We threw them up into the air, tried to catch them. But then my mother walked into the room. All hell broke loose. She screamed at us for hours. I think. You always exaggerate memories. But, anyway, it felt like hours. Mary and I thought it was one of the best nights ever, until my mother found out.” He chuckled. “She always ruined our fun. She still does.”

Leith raised his eyebrows. “Fun,” he echoed.

Francis nodded, still lost in the wispy tendrils of the memory. And then it happened. All in a blur, so fast Leith didn’t even know what was happening. Leith leaned in, shoving his face into Francis’s. Their lips met with a fierce click as their teeth banged together, a consequence of the speed that necessitated Leith’s unprovoked attack on the dauphin. His lips were salty and dry; cracked from the frozen cold from outside. Francis’s eyes widened, and he emitted emphatic muffled noises. “Mmmth. _Mmmmth_. Stoompth.”

Leith pulled back, eyes narrowed slightly, and Francis sat there, breathing rough and fast. He brought a hand up to his mouth after a while, wiping it slowly. He closed his eyes briefly. He opened them after a moment. “I understand, Leith. You miss your girl. You miss touching her, being touched. I…miss it, too. Not—not touching _your_ girl. I mean…you understand what I mean. Since it’s clear you won’t be able to focus without, er…getting your fill, maybe we should…you know…maybe we should…”

“I completely understand,” said Leith as he ripped through the fragile ties on his thin shirt. He thrust the heavy fur blanket on the ground and frowned as he tried to get up, his arm restraining his movement.

Francis looked down at him and laughed softly to himself. He took his time unlacing his shirt and brought it up off his body languidly. As he reached down for his breeches, he glanced back at Leith. “This means nothing, of course. Just so we understand one another. This is purely to satisfy our needs.”

“Obviously,” Leith answered, already hungering for the feel of bare skin on bare skin. He whipped off his shirt. “I mean,” he continued between the pants that came from the heavy anticipation, “why else would we be doing this?”

“Exactly,” Francis agreed, nodding emphatically. “I just wanted to make sure we were at the same point. It’s clear we are, so…” He lifted an arm, a lazy invitation, a lethargic beckoning; one Leith had been desperately waiting for.

And Leith took it. Grabbed it with both hands and ran with it as he practically lunged onto Francis, putting a hand on the back of the prince’s head, burying his fingers in his curls and locking them into place. He brought Francis’s mouth to his, and, this time, there was no resistance. Both men sank into the kiss with hungry passion, white-hot desire, a madness that neither had experienced. It was almost animalistic, their need to feel and be felt. Their kiss was fierce and rough and sloppy, both men practically devouring each other’s lips. Leith slipped his tongue between Francis’s lips, and Francis’s eyebrows shot up. He nipped the edge of Leith’s tongue with his front teeth, leaving the tip of Leith’s tongue stinging and throbbing. Leith moaned in pleasure, tightening his fists around Francis’s curls. The dauphin’s head was pulled backward from Leith’s forceful clutching, but Leith shot toward Francis’s mouth, reclaiming his lips victoriously in a violent kiss. Leith’s mouth was dry, his lips, like Francis’s, cracked. It wasn’t too long before both pairs had widened too far and rusty blood streaked both mouths. Leith chuckled at the salty, metallic taste of the blood, using his tongue to lick it away. Blood didn’t scare him anymore.

What did scare him, however, was his need to let his passion run free, that tightening in his chest that threatened to consume him. “Francis,” Leith gasped against the prince’s lips. “Francis. I—I need _more_.”

Perhaps Francis had astonishingly fast reflexes, or maybe he’d simply read Leith’s mind, but no sooner had Leith’s plea left his mouth when Francis ground himself into the other man’s cock through his breeches. “Unnnfh…breeches…off…now,” Leith managed to hiss out.

Francis smirked smugly and slipped out of his trousers, unlacing Leith’s when he’d finished. There was a short pause as the two men ceased all movement, just staring at each other, as if unsure what to do next. Then, almost simultaneously, they lunged for each other, Leith catching Francis’s shoulders in a wicked grip, digging his fingernails into the prince’s flesh. Francis linked his arms around Leith’s waist, pulling his body closer. Leith shuddered as their bare chests collided into each other, both their cocks hard and hot and heavy as their waists were smashed into the other’s.

They stood upright, writhing against each other in the air, their bodies hot and sweaty and tingling. They were wrapped around each other tightly, and Leith wasn’t sure whether it was from the cold outside, or if it was from the desire, or from the heat of the moment. But he clutched Francis close to him, gasping and moaning as the prince sucked hard on his neck.

In a spurt of bravery, Leith moved his mouth to Francis’s chest, savoring the feel of sinewy skin, stringy, hard muscle, on his lips. He moved down, his ears ringing with the sound of Francis’s satisfied pants against his neck. And he didn’t stop moving. He didn’t stop at Francis’s midsection, or at his belly button, which begged a momentary pause to swipe his tongue around, grinning with his mouth open, his tongue wagging, as Francis’s eyes closed and he inhaled sharply. He didn’t stop as his fingers danced over Francis’s sharp, protruding hip bones, didn’t stop as he took the prince’s cock in his hands. But he did stop—he stopped so abruptly that Francis’s eyes snapped open, focusing quickly on Leith, as if to ask why he was not feeling what he expected to—when a man’s shout drifted through the thin flaps of the tent. “Bayard! Eh! Bayard!”

The two men stared at each other, frozen in their positions. Their eyes met briefly, enough to come to a silent agreement. Leith leapt onto his cot, grabbing the rough fur blanket and covering his naked body with it. Francis pulled on his breeches, throwing down his shirt when he realized there would be no time to don it.

The tent flaps opened, light pouring into the dark area. “Bayard?” The man took in a suspiciously sleeping Leith. He nodded respectfully when he noticed Francis sitting there, shirt off, pretending to check his “wounds.” “Sir,” he said to the dauphin.

Really, the whole thing would’ve been more believable if Francis had had any wounds on his body, and if Leith would’ve kept his eyes firmly shut. As it was, Francis’s long, pale arms were smooth, no sign of wounds anywhere, and Leith’s eyes would become slits as he attempted to assess the situation without drawing too much attention.

The man grunted. “We’re packin’ up, Leith. Should be moving out in but an hour.” He added a half-bow in Francis’s direction, backing out of the tent quickly.

As the silence fell, the two exchanged a look before completely dissolving in laughter. “Well,” said Francis through the rolls of chuckles, “I suppose we should pack up, then?”

“I suppose so.”

Francis grinned and tugged his shirt on, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively in Leith’s direction. Leith’s cheeks colored, and he ducked his head, pulling his legs out of the blanket’s warmth to drag his clothes on.

As Francis carefully looped his belt, he stole glances at Leith. “It…um…it was good. Nice. It—I mean…you know.” He stared at him nervously, playing with his fingers.

Leith nodded his head in agreement and Francis looked a bit relieved. That huge beam stole its way back onto the dauphin’s face. “It meant nothing,” said Francis, raising his hands and his eyebrows, “and it was nice to finally not have any commitments. Thank you, Leith. Other men would’ve laughed or done something even worse.” He thumped Leith’s back, murmuring a rushed apology as Leith grimaced in pain.

Francis retreated out of the tent with a quick nod and wave, off to shove his few belongings out of his tent and into his saddle bag. Leith sat back on the cot and sighed.  It had meant nothing. Leith knew that. Francis knew that. Francis knew it had meant nothing, and Leith knew. It had meant nothing. They’d both been tired and weary and home-sick and overcome by desire. And not for each other. For their loves back at home, waiting for them. It had meant nothing.

But if he was honest, Leith knew that while it hadn’t necessarily meant _something_ , it wasn’t _exactly_ nothing. It had been one bit of a something. One little, tiny bit.

He sighed again and stood slowly, the creaking ache of his wounds creeping back into his body. There was nothing left to do but pack and think of a certain beautiful blond far away, a certain blond who would never be his.

**Author's Note:**

> This was basically my experiment piece. It wasn't great or anything, it wasn't supposed to be great, I just wanted to try something new. Anyway, I wanted to look a bit deeper into Leith and Francis's relationship, as they seemed pretty fond of each other in 1x22. So yeah, thanks for sticking with me long enough to read this.


End file.
